Walter, DrBASS

Oakland (Fordyce) Cemetery
Dallas County,Arkansas

April 15, 1854 - March 9, 1930

D. Walter Bass, a prominent educator of Calhoun County, was born at Chambersville in 1854, the youngest child born to the union of Dr. Bass and Miss Eliza F. Porter, a native of Georgia. His father was a self-made man; he was born in North Carolina, and left home in his youth, and engaged as clerk, in the meantime attending school a few months. He was married in Georgia, about 1835, and resided in Harris County, that State, for a time, engaged in merchandising; then he went to Chambers County, Ga., in 1839, where he also engaged in mercantile pursuits. He resided at this place until 1847, when he came to Arkansas, settling in Dallas County, in what is now Moro Township, Calhoun County. Here he started a store, the first in the present limits of Calhoun County. The place was soon given the name of Chambersville, from the fact of the people coming from Chambers County, Ala. Mr. Bass was soon appointed postmaster of the first post-office established in this county. Here he lived, doing a good trade for that time, and accumulated quite a nice property. He died in 1853, six months before the birth of our subject. The mother died in 1871. Of this family there are now nine children living, and all live in Calhoun County, except the eldest child, Louisa Jane, who lives in Camden. The two who died were twins, and died in Georgia in infancy. The property of this estate was lost from mismanagement, on the part of the administrator, and our subject was reared on his mother's farm. He attended the common schools until the outbreak of the war, when the schools were all closed, and his educational advantages during the continuance of the war, were consequently extremely limited. After his mother's death in 1871, Mr. Bass went to Camden, and engaged as clerk. He remained there two years, and then came to Chambersville and attended school for one year, and in 1874 taught his first school. In 1875 he re-engaged as a clerk for the first part of the year, then came back and attended school for awhile, and then taught school in the same settlement that he had taught before. On account of bad health, the next year he was compelled to rest. In 1876 he taught his first free school, and then made his home with Mr. Wade, for whom he worked nine months of the year, teaching the remaining three months. He remained here for three years, and since then has been teaching regularly in this, Dallas or Ouachita Counties. At present he owns three farms, consisting of 366 acres, which he has purchased from time to time, all in this county, except eighty acres in Dallas County. He has eighty acres under cultivation, and the balance of the land is covered with good timber. Mr. Bass is an enterprising and progressive young man, and is doing well at his vocation. (Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas - Goodspeed Publishing Company - 1890)

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